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A jam submission

StrandedView game page

Escape the debris of your crashed ship and return home
Submitted by Dancovich — 8 minutes, 44 seconds before the deadline
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Stranded's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Fun#14.2334.233
Overall#23.9573.957
Theme#34.5334.533
Controls#53.8003.800
Audio#73.8003.800
Originality#94.0674.067
Accessibility#103.3003.300
Graphics#113.9673.967

Ranked from 30 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

Godot version
3.3.2

Wildcards used
None

Game description
You're stranded in space after your cargo ship crashed. Use the teleporters to reach your escape pod and go home.

Source
No

Discord username
Dancovich#2495

Participation level (GWJ only)
Yes, it's my first time

Participation level across all jams
This is my second jam

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Comments

Viewing comments 20 to 1 of 22 · Previous page · First page
Submitted

Neat game :D I enjoyed it a lot. The trial and error associated with trying to figure out how exactly the black holes are gonna suck me was a little bit challenging but overall, it was fun and there were a lot of well-designed and well-balanced levels. Congrats on the good entry!! :)

Submitted

Pretty fun game. I think the variety in levels was more or less enough to hold my attention the entire time... just the different rearrangements of black holes and platforms was really enough for how short the game is.

I thought the physics were a bit finicky... sometimes the black holes would direct me the opposite direction I expected, and sometimes I would get confused where exactly I should place my mouse to change the strength. (I think the mouse center suggestion is a good one).

Somehow when I first went through the tutorial I ended up thinking we were supposed to click on the screen where we wanted the player character to fly towards, as that's essentially what I did to complete the tutorial. Not really a real problem, just an interesting phenomenon.

One nitpick: I feel like the fire might look better if the texture was drawn at its maximum size and then scaled down (or, if necessary, have a couple different textures for different scales). Not a huge deal, I just tend to think consistently scaled pixels look better.

Overall though this was an incredibly solid entry. The game was fun, looked good, and sounded good.

Developer

Thank you for your words.

I agree about the physics and controls. It's something I intended to improve but ran out of time. I'll try to fix it post jam.

About the fire... this is a pretty low res game, so scaling down usually makes things awful, but maybe if I make the fire big enough this can work. I'll give it a try.

Again, thank you for playing my little game.

Submitted

I liked it! It was fun, had nice sound, controls were clear enough. I ended up clearing it completely. None of the puzzles felt particularly difficult, and I think that is generally a good thing for a Jam game. I would have liked to have a bit more of a clear input on where I was launching myself, but. That said. It wasn't a huge setback to be launched slightly off target. The reset time is super forgiving for when you make errors. So in that regard, the direction indicator really wasn't a big deal. And you could even argue it just adds to the games overall identity/difficulty. 

Great entry! ^^

Developer

Thanks for playing and for your comments.

I agree about the difficulty for jams. I noticed that the levels were on the easy side but it didn't seem people could just breeze though levels, so I felt the difficulty was alright.

I intend to improve on the direction indication. I wasn't super happy with it in the end but I ran out of time.

I also feel I need one extra dialog when the black hole is first introduced. It takes a while to figure out how to use it to clear levels.

Again thanks for your comments.

Submitted

It was a cool idea and executed quite nicely!

The jump indicator or the jump itself felt a bit wanky, but it was playable! 

Submitted

A very fun puzzle game! I could definitely find myself relaxing to some of these levels… or getting very frustrated as my brain works to figure out more complicated ones!

Here are some thoughts as I was playing the game…

  • The jump indicator (the three arcs … is there an official name for this? lol) is a little too broad, I think. When doing a jump style game, in my humble opinion, while you may not want to exactly mark out on the map precisely where your character is going to go, it should have a little bit more of an arrow-like indicator. Even just a little dot or triangle where the “center” of the indicator is. There were times I was making a jump and I thought I was aiming for a few degrees further up or down than I ended up jumping. This wasn’t a horrible issue, mind you, but it did irk me on a couple jumps.
  • The gravity well/black hole element is awesome, but it’s introduced in an overly complicated level. I kinda sussed out what it was and was able to figure out the level, but others (especially young or new gamers with less experience in this style of game) may not quite understand it. In a later level you use the gravity well in a much simpler level. I think these two levels should have been switched.
  • The radius you defined for the “sling” control might be too far back from the character. For the most part it’s not an issue, but there were times when I was near an edge of the screen where the control seemed to go a little haywire and I suspect it was because my mouse cursor couldn’t move outside of this radius. I hope that makes sense.
  • This one is an idea/suggestion and not a critique of any issue… I noticed when the character was in the middle of a jump, there was an “air” (I assumed) indicator. I thought it would be cool (maybe for a difficulty setting) if the level had the air indicator instead of the character. Add that time element to the level. You could then add “air” canisters in the levels in such a way where the player would then have to choose whether to attempt finish the level as is, or jump for some extra air.

Ultimately, I really enjoyed this game very much! Excellent work!

Developer

Thank you for playing and your suggestions.

About the jump indicator, I agree. I wasn't particular happy with it in the end and others complained as well. I intend on improving this after the jam (if real life lets me).

The black hole was a frustration of mine. I intended to introduce the same dialog I had at the beginning every time a new hazard was introduced, just to give a tip on how the hazard worked. The final levels were also not what I've liked. In the end I just hadn't enough time and went with something that worked.

The sling control doesn't have a defined radius, you can click anywhere on the screen. I can't blame you for not knowing this though, again, no time to create systems to teach the player how to play the game. One suggestion some other player gave me that I liked is to place a marker where you started clicking, making it easier to judge direction and pull strength.

Nice suggestion about the air meter. I confess that mechanic didn't have an official name as it was a fix for an issue the game had. At a certain point in development the black hole could lock you into orbit, basically soft locking the game. I added a "time in air" mechanic to avoid that and liked it as an added layer of difficulty. I intend to improve on the timed aspect, maybe even adding an overal timer and a speedrun mode.

Submitted

Real fun puzzle platformer with mouse only controls

I really like the tune that really fits the space setting, and the little animation details on the pixel art like the booster flame and "radio wave" cone to indicate the direction and power of the thrust instead of having them in a UI

My only gripe is that it can be a bit hard to precisely estimate where you're gonna land with the radio thing alone, but nothing really major, the controls were easy to understand and get used to and i had fun playing the game, i just didn't manage to get past the level where you have one black hole at the bottom and i couldn't figure out where to go to pass it :(

But solid entry anyway :)

Developer(+1)

Thank you for playing.

Yeah, I'll definitely improve on this after the jam. Others complained about the same thing and I wasn't happy with the result either, but there wasn't enough time to change it before submitting. Just jam  things™, hehe.

Submitted

Well like you said  : Just jam  things™ plus the indicators aren't that big of an issue XD

Submitted

Interesting idea! It’s a bit hard to pre-visualize your targeted point. The collision is a bit finicky sometimes but the game is quite fun overall. I did not manage to get past a level where I think you have to alter your course using a black hole.

The art looks nice, it has its own style and a pretty good polish (the black hole animation is great)

Submitted

That was a really good puzzle game. It took me a bit to get a feeling for the controls (and sometimes they still felt a bit finiky), but overall I loved it. It's a really good idea well executed (and the presentation is also lovely!).

Submitted

Very nice idea and neat execution. Proof that you don't need a complicated set of rules to make a great puzzle game. Wish we could see where the mouse drag center is for better fine tuning of the movement.

Developer(+1)

Thank you for playing. Good suggestion on the mouse drag center, I plan on improving the game after the jam and I'll try to implement that.

Submitted(+1)

Dude, your game rocks! I liked everything about it. It's one of these games where you can see a potential for something beyond the jam. Congratulations

Developer

Thank you for the kind words. I definitely plan on improving upon it, let's see if the real world agrees with me though.

Submitted(+1)

Clever concept, and well executed! There's a good amount of content here, too, so it feels like you're making the most out of the idea. It would be nice to have some indication of your trajectory before you take off (i.e. a line that bends around the black holes), but maybe that'd make it too easy.

Developer

Thank you for playing and for your comments, the best part of the jam is having others play your game and give you their impressions

The idea was to have various types of black holes (at least an additional one that pushes you) and have the visuals represent better the area of effect of them, but I ran out of time.

I intend to improve the game after the jam and one of the ideas is to develop an editor tool to predict the trajectory, so that I have an easier time designing the levels. Maybe have this system work during gameplay too would be nice, at least for an "easy" level.

Submitted(+1)

I really enjoyed this game. The levels have a nice difficulty curve, and they are very fun.
Tho the general difficulty of the levels could be a little higher in my opinion.
The artwork looks nice, and the music fits well with the game.
There are some small visual complaints i would have, such as the tiles not connecting to the off screen, and the layers off some objects looking weird, but those are just small nitpicks

Developer(+1)

I agree levels are a bit easy right now and after the jam I intend to fork this game and design new levels. I had very little time to actually do level design and I thought that if I could find the right balance of easy but still challenging then the game would be easier to play during a jam.

About the tiles I could've simply created tiles beyond the border, which would give the impression they connect, but I found a glitch where you could stand in those tiles and get lost outside of the screen, so I avoided placing tiles outside your fov. Definitely will try to improve that and the layers.

Thanks for playing and for your suggestions.

Submitted

Very nice set of puzzles. The graphics worked well for the game and the audio fit nicely. And the levels felt well designed and progressively more challenging.

Submitted

This was really fun, cool mechanics and interesting challenges.

Amazing!

Submitted

Really nice game, love the mechanics

Submitted

The game was a lot of fun to play, it was well polished and the idea/execution was fantastic. Also, the music really fit the art style/atmosphere.

Submitted

Fun game! Congrats! I've really enjoyed the aesthetics too.

Submitted

Loved the mechanics and the premise of the game, as well as that presentation!! The music has that really nice and weird atmosphere with some groove to it, and the art is really tight, really cool game!!

Submitted

Very nice! The mechanics works fine! Good work!

Submitted

Nice game! The mechanics were very tight and it played well. I loved using the black holes to orbit around. Nice job to everyone on the team :D

Viewing comments 20 to 1 of 22 · Previous page · First page